Citizens for Conservation acquires land for restoration

We are thrilled to announce that we have acquired two parcels of land that are significant additions towards achieving our 25-year strategic goal of linked ecosystems in the Barrington area.

One parcel was acquired from Arthur Rice III and Lynn Rice and is across Hart Road to the west of our Craftsbury Preserve, which is currently being restored. We plan to consolidate the preserve with the new 31-acre parcel creating a single preserve, divided by Hart Road. The new preserve will be 53 acres, and will be CFC’s second-largest preserve, after Flint Creek Savanna.

The other parcel of nearly five acres on West Oak Knoll Road in Barrington Hills was generously donated to CFC by the Joan Y. Mullins Trust. The land is near our Grigsby Prairie Preserve and is adjacent to the open space of Barrington Hills Country Club. We will be developing land management plans for the property in the future.

The
acquisitions are important to CFC for a number of reasons, said Kevin Scheiwiller,
CFC’s restoration manager. “The new Craftsbury tract of land offers rolling
topography and wetland depressions left over as the last glaciers receded from
this area,” he said. “It also contains the remainder of the main wetland from
the original Craftsbury (East) donation. Even though all you can currently see
from Hart Road are buckthorn and cattails, there are still small pockets of
remnant, conservative species hanging on at this site. The removal of buckthorn
will allow residents of the Barrington area to enjoy the 53 acres of rolling
grasslands while furthering the ecological health of this site.”

Scheiwiller
added that the Mullins land donation is a “vital parcel of open land within the
Flint Creek Watershed, helping to further the Barrington Greenway. The property
lies in between Grigsby Prairie, Paganica Prairie, and the remnant prairie
along the Metra tracks. It will take quite a bit of effort to re-establish
native vegetation on this preserve, but it is now protected as open space from
future development.”

“CFC is thrilled to add these properties and thanks the many
people, donors and volunteers who have worked to help CFC acquire these
parcels,” said Kathleen Leitner, CFC board president.

With the new acquisitions, we now own and manage more than 476 acres. Over the past 48 years we have helped protect almost 3,500 acres in the Barrington area.